When we last saw Mappy, he was on a trailer headed towards our new garage. Although we did not make a priority of getting the 20+year-old arcade machine into the house, we figured we better get it out of the garage before the seasons turned any further. So Mappy made the big move to our living room.
It's certainly better than I thought, anyway. Thanks again for the sale, TRU!
When I initially made my decision to pass on Metroid Prime 3, I read the usual review suspects... all of which said the game was awesome. And yeah, I figured it would be. But the reasons I really like it aren't getting the press.
For the record, I liked Simpsons: Hit & Run and would not be adverse to another game showing up along those lines. This new The Simpsons Game is supposed to be pretty much just that (sans the driving stuff)... but with the intriguing bonus of containing a lot of video game parody material.
But if you can't get the fucking camera to work right, all the HI-larious Final Fantasy and Metal Gear jokes in the world won't get me near this turd.
The demo level has Homer and Bart (you control both, in an obnoxious and unnecessary complication for a frickin' demo) dropped into the middle of a burned out Springfield, with a rampaging Lard Lad on the loose.
(Sidebar: Here's the Big Problem with Simpsons games... the same episode refs over and over and over. Oh ho ho, fucking Lard Lad, god that's great.)
I'm on shore leave this week, and one of my tasks is to organize the stacks of comics that have built up. The oldest cover date I have is from January 2006, so that's roughly two years worth of books to bag, alphabetize and lose forever to the shelves in the basement. So, as I did two years ago, here's my favorite covers.
(52 #48) Really, almost every issue of 52 had a great cover (unlike Countdown, which has been largely unmemorable in that regard), but this "Answer the Question" tag is just faceless head and shoulders above the rest.
(Books of Doom #1) Hits so many classic Doom beats: he's menacing, he's on his throne, he's pissed, he's maneuvering toward you a spider on the prowl.
(The Flash #230) This is the last issue before the ill-fated Bart run. Great, compelling image... hiding an utterly abysmal farewell issue.
See, now these are the kind of life-changing announcements we were all expecting at E3, not that WiiFit = Big Final Amazement crap. This is all from Nintendo's "Fall Conference," whatever the hell that was. (Links to Kotaku)
Smash Brawl delayed... but has Sonic and online co-op The article says the Japan release has been pushed to January 24, so I can't imagine the US version sticking to the previous December 3 announcement. At least now I know what I'll be using my first vacation days for in the new year.
Sonic, verified! Brawl is going to be so much bigger than we thought, friends. (Pics, movies here.)
Infinity Gauntlet Part VI - JLA vs. Thanos (YouTube) A faked up Marvel Super Heroes battle (with multiple parts available to watch). Hang out for the finale of this one, where some very cool Flash and Guy Gardner sprites lose to Thanos.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl Delayed To 2008 In US (Kotaku) February 10... a two month delay. So now, instead of being uncomfortably close to Rock Band and Mario Galaxy, it's uncomfortably close to LittleBigPlanet and Metal Gear 4. At least all this release-date-slipping guarantees that we won't have the usual crappy 1Q post-holiday dead time.
Nintendo's Holiday Release Dates (Nintendo World Report) Speaking of release dates, here's the DS and Wii list through the end of the year and beyond. Endless Ocean is booked for January, and I think we still know next to nothing about it. Mario/Sonic and the Olympics comes out just a week before Mario Galaxy... sorry about that, Olympics!
Also, "Betty Boop's Double Shift"... amazing that three years later, we still haven't gotten past DS games that have to have some kind of absurd D. S. initialed subtitle.
I didn't really finish organizing my un-filed comics this week.
First I ran out of bags, so I bought another 300 bags at the shop. Then I ran out of stickers (to close the bags), so I had to buy more of those. Then I ran out of bags again.
I'm guessing another 200 bags should more than cover me. The box with the cat in it has the unbagged books.
Now, I figure that Warhawk is pretty much the rich man's Halo, but I've been digging it. I tend to float into Team Deathmatch games because I don't necessarily want to think about organized tactics, just be assured that not everybody on the map isn't out to kill me. I've been using the Bluetooth headset although I have experienced mercifully few other players who actually talk during Warhawk games. I'm not even sure if the damn thing works, because they don't put useful buttons on it, like say "On" or "Off."
But it's been fun. Spawn into map -> run for weapons -> hop into a vehicle -> attempt to kill somebody before dying. The game's central focus - the little jet thingies - are really cool.
No, I haven't bothered using the motion controls for the planes. That sucks.
Anyway, after a couple matches, I noticed my profile page had started tracking stats and I had achieved a rank upgrade.
Superman's Vibrating Face I think this was originated by John Byrne in his Man of Steel miniseries that presented the new canonical Superman immediately after Crisis. The idea was that whenever Superman saw he was being photographed or videotaped, he would quickly shake his head to blur his features, so people wouldn't get clear images in the newspaper and connect him to Clark Kent.
Yeah, it's silly... almost Silver Age silly. But it impressed upon me just how difficult it was to be Superman, with his heightened senses. That guy operates on a level way beyond normal humans, if he has to be constantly on a sub-cognitive lookout for recording devices in crowd scenes.
Status: Probably hasn't been discussed since Byrne's miniseries. Although we constantly see Byrne's other contribution to the mythos: Superman shaving by bouncing his heat vision off a reflective piece of metal.
Batman is an Urban Legend I LOVED this one. It probably originates from around the same time, that delicate little post-Crisis era when DC had this concerted push to make their heroes more realistic. There's definitely an echo of it in the Michael Keaton Batman movie.
Having Gotham City in a constant state of confusion over whether Batman actually exists just seemed so damned smart to me, and I like when Batman is smart. While other cities turned their highly-visible hometown heroes into celebs (witness Cental City's gushing Flash Museum), Batman worked to maintain his secrecy, using doubt and fear as weapons in his war on crime.
Silver Age fans hate this idea, as it deletes all the stupid Batcopters and Batman-shaking-hands-with-the-Mayor kind of junk. I think it just makes a lot of sense.
10.18.07: Things that have changed since Smash Bros Melee was released. posted by Joe
With Smash Bros Brawl showing up to smother our Wiis in a few months, I've been thinking about how long it has been since Smash Melee came out... December 2001. Almost a GameCube launch game, but not quite. I was there. One of the features that made Melee seem like such an advancement over the previous generation was its expansiveness. There was a ton of characters and venues to unlock, an unbelievable stats system, more gameplay modes than you would ever need (or master; stupid Target Test!), and, of course, the interactive Nintendo history of the collectible trophies.
The entire game was one concentrated nostalgia wave, and Brawl will be no different. In fact, it's going to be bigger, thanks to the possibilities of opening up the doors to classic characters outside of Nintendo's extended family. One of the reasons floated for the game's delay was to perhaps integrate other non-Nintendo fighters into the game. That would be a nice surprise since they've already revealed Snake and Sonic, but I would doubt that two months is enough time to make something like happen. The move to February feels more like a political move, to allow Mario Galaxy and other titles room to breathe for the holidays and fill a hole in the Wii's dance card next year. Prior to the Smash switch, what was Nintendo's big competition for Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet, and GTA IV? Wii Fit and Endless Ocean?
Anyway, I was thinking about how much Nintendo has changed since December 2001, and what this means for Smash Brawl.
its a larger world after all (Mice Age) small world at Disneyland regularly breaks down because all the fat people sink those old World's Fair boats and scrape the bottom of the trench.
Katamari Simpsony (Aeropause) As cool as this is, it's not enough to make me overlook that assfest of a demo.
If you're like me, you're only two pickups away from finding all one hundred.
And you're pretty proud about that, because you didn't have to resort to GameFAQs to figure out how to get them. You activated the Chozo Observatory hint system, which puts little dots on your in-game map wherever a pickup is hiding. Then, before heading to the game's final planet, you went around and tracked each little dot and turned it into a little X. So your pockets are bursting with missile expansions and energy tanks and whatever else Metroid Prime 3 has you collecting to reach that magical 100.
But if you're like me, you can't find two of them. You've pored over the maps, slowly scanning each one for any little dots that you overlooked. Planet Norion? Check. Bryyo? Yep. Elysia? All done. Pirate Homeworld (couldn't they have named that?) All X'd.
Hey, maybe the game is saving the last two pickups for the final planet, Phaaze. So you trigger the events that send Samus off to her destiny on Phaaze, even after one of the Aurora Units gives you the warning that once you go to Phaaze, you won't be able to come back.
You poke around on Phaaze for a bit. No pickups. You inch closer and closer to what you know is going to end the game, and you're still at 98%.
So you give in. You go search for Metroid 3 on GameFAQs. Because you need those last two pickups.
Two weeks ago I upgraded from Movable Type 3.3X to 4.01, because I hate having stuff out of date. It hasn't been the greatest experience.
4.0 is a massive change from the 2-3.0 years. First of all, the new UI is really ugly. Color-wise, it's a mess. There's a black bar at the top that uses green text, then your actual input windows are all light-blue with black or blue text. And there's a big orange "Write Entry" button. Guh? The previous version did everything in pastel blues and greens. Regardless of your feeling towards pastels, it felt like a unified presentation. Also, there's no design to the new look. The only graphic element is the wrench in the MT logo. I don't get it... where did the classiness go?
There's some weirdness in the menu bars, but probably nothing that I won't get used to. There is an effort to categorize the typical weblog publishing tools as either Create, Manage, or Design... and come on, there's not a lot of functional difference between those three words. It's splitting hairs. Writing a new entry (assuming you didn't use that awful orange button) is under Create. Writing a new template is under Design. If you want to see all of your entries (which I do a lot because I always have a handful of unfinished posts in progress), that's under Manage.
Really, if I could stomach the looks-like-puke stuff you get with joints like Blogger, I probably wouldn't even bother with Movable Type. Because I hate installing and upgrading it. It's just enough outside of my expertise that I always screw something up. Last time I worked on MT, I paid to have them do the install (especially because I wanted to change my database from Berkeley to MySQL, and I simply could not be responsible for doing that.)
Clark is almost to the point where he can watch an entire movie. The last hour is pretty dicey but he's usually glued for the first half. What I find most interesting is how his 2.5 year old brain processes the storyline information.
A few weeks ago we watched the second Fantastic Four movie. Yes, it was about six times better than Spider-Man 3. At no point in FF2 did I stare through the screen thinking "What in the fuck is that." So that right there makes it a better film. Funny that the two Fantastic Four movies have a rep for being light and silly yet in Spider-Man 3 we waste five minutes making an omelette with Harry while listening to doo wop.
Anyway, we got out Clark's Fantastic Four toys while the DVD ran, and we made matches between the figures and the characters onscreen. He reenacted the chase scene with Torch and the Surfer, that sort of thing. After the movie was over, we talked about the characters some more, and I held up the Silver Surfer figure (one of those cute little Superhero Squad toys) and asked him "What does this guy do?"
Clark said "Surfer cries."
And no, he did not say "flies" and I misheard. It was "cries," and it is "cries," because he'll tell you the same thing every time you ask about the Silver Surfer. Surfer cries. There's a sympathetic tone in his voice when he says it, too. Because, as crying is one of about ten activities you can expect from a two year old, Clark knows that crying means something is wrong.
He's already figured out the poignant wistfulness to Stan and Jack's cosmic wanderer.
Why We Swear (The New Republic) Amazing essay about the power, form and origin of swearing.
J.K. Rowling outs Hogwarts character (Yahoo News) She's rich enough that she can say that now, but wouldn't it have been just a little braver had she actually written it down?
Went out to Toys R Us and picked up the new Ratchet & Clank game. I don't hold out much hope, but I dearly want this to accelerate the series forward in the way that the second game did and the third game didn't. At least it will look damn good, no matter what happens.
We had a 20% off coupon that expired today. I headed out planning on R&C but kept Eye of Judgement in mind as a backup. In the mail we received another batch of coupons that activate tomorrow. It's that time of year. Interestingly, the coupons we received as TRU credit card holders are worse than the coupons sent out to everyone else. The card holder discount saves you $25... if you spend $250. The "normal" coupons give you a $10 gift card if you spend $75. Way to go.
Of course, since my Toys R Us absolutely hates to sell things, they had no Ratchet & Clank boxes out on the shelf. None. But there it was, stashed sideways in the glass case behind the counter. They really are shit worthless out there. If you're looking for the PS3 editions of Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man 3, or any given carbon copy sports title, they're your lads. Brand new triple-A games for a console that's barely treading water and has fans desperate to nail anything that moves? Hidden.
And don't even ask about Eye of Judgement. I could not find it anywhere in the store, and I checked all the stupid places that my idiot TRU would possibly file it... like with the pink MP3 players or over by Electronic Battleship.
Although I originally had no intention of doing such this early, I did end up getting Phantom Hourglass. Toys R Us did ANOTHER buy 2-get 1 free deal and I have such trouble staying away from those. This time, my sister and I held a twenty minute cell phone caucus as we decided how to maximize our deal. Obviously it makes no sense to screw up a B2G1 deal with two $50 games and one $30 game. We ended up getting two copies of Phantom Hourglass ($35 each) and my sister picked up the Wii edition of Resident Evil 4 ($30). Should be awesome.
We did Zelda's online multiplayer right away. It's weird. And it takes forever.
It's cute, I guess. After selecting a map, one player plays Link who has to run around the maze hoisting gems back to his base. The other player controls three Phantoms in an effort to catch the faster Link. The trick is that the Phantoms are not directly controlled; you draw lines to put them on a path, and if those paths get near Link, he's dead in one hit. Sort of Pac-Manish, actually. Then you switch sides, and you each get, like, three turns on each team. That's why it takes forever. Any game design student can tell you that as soon as a game has different teams and makes players take turns playing them, that means there's no balance.
Although the odd bit is that I always felt like a loser no matter which side I was playing. As Link, I was prone to getting cornered, especially when carrying a heavy gem. As the Phantoms, I felt like I had no chance to catch Link. I can't say it was particularly fun. I acknowledge that it was my first outing, but the lengthy time commitment and not-really-Zelda gameplay did not inspire me to investigate further.
Seriously, this thing is just about unplayable.
Superman's Vibrating Face
Clark is almost to the point where he can watch an entire movie. The last hour is pretty dicey but he's usually glued for the first half. What I find most interesting is how his 2.5 year old brain processes the storyline information.
Went out to Toys R Us and picked up the new Ratchet & Clank game. I don't hold out much hope, but I dearly want this to accelerate the series forward in the way that the second game did and the third game didn't. At least it will look damn good, no matter what happens.
Although I originally had no intention of doing such this early, I did end up getting Phantom Hourglass. Toys R Us did ANOTHER buy 2-get 1 free deal and I have such trouble staying away from those. This time, my sister and I held a twenty minute cell phone caucus as we decided how to maximize our deal. Obviously it makes no sense to screw up a B2G1 deal with two $50 games and one $30 game. We ended up getting two copies of Phantom Hourglass ($35 each) and my sister picked up the Wii edition of Resident Evil 4 ($30). Should be awesome.
